Friday, January 16, 2009

Guest of the Ghouls

Shambling your way from beyond the grave today is Tale #2 from the January 1954 issue of Beware #7. This Sid Check classic was posted online last year at Mr. Doortree's blog but now I can't find it... so here it is again in all of its spooky, undead glory (we are looking at the entire issue this week afterall anyway.)

13 comments:

Horror pariah
said...

Really enjoy stories where different kinds of monsters are shown to have their own societies and habits. Usually this approach leads to either humor(intentional or not)or shock endings like: "you mean the whole town was made up of werewolves!!??" etc. So i thought it was REALLY creepy to see a whole set of zombies who continue to rob graves as eternal punishment for doing the same thing in life, even though they have absolutely no use for what they steal, but come to enjoy it anyway, BRRRR. Lastly i was kind of confused(for lack of a better term)that the first page makes mention of whole groups of people who seek out tombstones for silly or unintentionally humorous epitaphs. I mean i love seeing that kind of stuff all the time(and HAVE seen a few questionable tombstone engravings, ranging from name misspelling to grafitti) and would try and seek out those types of messages if i could, but really? was this ever actually somenthing that would have/has caught on enough to build a story around it?. Too weird, but i would LOVE to see people who do this kind of thing in real life.

@Horrorpariah:Tombstone etchings were used mainly by people researching their ancestors or to remember a deceased friend (i.e., etchings of the Vietnam Veterans' Wall). In the fifties, people would "collect" weird or funny epitaphs. I remember seeing several different books of samples.

Sometimes etchings were made of unusally designed tombstones themselves, but this has largely been replaced by cameras.

The Sid Check artwork here is wonderful and the story, like some others have said, is top notch. This tale, from the coloring to the karmic twist, exemplifies the perfect pre-code horror comic.

My basic cable sucks! All of these classic horror films on TCM make me want to get the premium package, but who needs 500 channels of crap otherwise? Who's got time for television, dammit (said with a highbrow sneer), especially when I've got comic books to read!

Tombstone etching is still very popular. I recently caught the tail end of some special about it on satellite. Last Fall I was at an old cemetery and saw a bunch of kids running around doing paper etchings from some of the older stones. It looked like a field trip... there in the graveyard--- of the dead!

And yes, this is some of my favorite Sid Check art too right here... I'll have to dig around the longboxes and see what else I have by him, maybe we'll do a spotlight on him next month.

Everyone have a great weekend, and don't forget there's more Beware #7 for the next few days too, don't miss it!

Great story here--love the art on the ghouls, and the character design for Javitt. He's a determined collector, isn't he? Sees his name on a grave, but still goes after the mausoleum with enough skill to pick a lock with a rake. What a guy!

The scenes with Javitt being forced into the coffin are chilling. Love it!

I'm not sure if the ghouls were continuing to rob graves as eternal punishment, after all, it is what they liked to do in life, there's something about Death being their enemy in there and they do seem like a fairly merry bunch.Nevertheless, I agree with the others - great story.

"...the capital of online comic book horrors... saying "Not the best story THOIA has run" is a bit like saying "one of Beethoven's lesser symphonies!"---Quasar Dragon

"...the object of all horror chicks' wet dreams... a comixkaze of awesome!"---Killer Kittens

"...an online repository of vintage comic fear fare where individual stories from long out-of-print issues are posted in high resolution, page by page. For a fan of EC, Atlas and other Silver Age-era comic companies, it is pure heaven (and hell)..."---Bryan Reesman (Attention Deficit Delirium)